When I was very little, I had an unexplained, pathological fear of Barbie dolls. I refused to be in the same room with them, and would run away if I saw one. For years, my older sisters would torture me by throwing a Barbie doll in my face and running away. I eventually grew out of this anti-Barbie phase, but after doing the research, I think I am relapsing.

Barbie’s neck is twice as long and six inches thinner than the average American woman. This would mean a real woman of her proportions would not be able to lift her own head. Her waist is 16 inches smaller than her head, so she would only have half a liver and a couple inches of intestines.

Her waist hip ratio is 56%, while the average American woman’s is 80%. With wrists 3.5 inches wide, heavy lifting would be out of the question. Her legs are 50% longer than her arms, while the average American woman’s legs are only 20% longer than their arms.

And, last but certainly not least, her ankles are 6 inches, and she would fit into a child size 3 shoe. Considering her weight distribution, she would not be able to manage walking on two feet, meaning she would have to walk on all fours.

Now, a woman who could not lift her own head, has severe liver and intestine deficiencies, cannot lift a bowling ball, and crawls around does not seem very attractive to me. So why does Mattel bill it as attractive?

Now, let us compare Barbie to an anorexic woman. Imagine we lined up the entire female population of the world. If we select one, there is a 12.5% she has the neck size of the average anorexic woman. There would be a 0.000000022956% chance her neck size would be like Barbie’s. There would be a 33% chance her chest size would be that of the average anorexic woman’s, but about a 7.7% chance it would be like Barbie’s. Her upper arms, 14.3% to 0.015%. Forearms, 11%  to 0.005%. Wrists, 9% to a number that has too many zeroes on it to calculate. I give up.

Although these are a lot of numbers, they are extremely important. Not only are the standards of Barbie not good enough for the average woman, it is not even good enough for the average anorexic woman! Slumber Party Barbie was released in 1965, along with a bathroom scale permanently set at 110, along with a helpful instruction book called “How To Lose Weight.” The entire contents of the book read, “Don’t eat.”

Barbie is the highest-selling toy of all time, sold to millions of young girls around the world. They see these highly unrealistic expectations of beauty, which our culture defines as the paradigm women. As girls mature into their teenage years, Barbie is plugged into the back of their minds when they look at magazines of models and see more examples of our definition of beauty.

It is no wonder the statistics of anorexia are so high. Mattel sells to young girls and subliminally convinces many that being skinny is the way to beauty. Mattel has a responsibility to help guide the opinions of young girls positively, so Mattel needs to make Barbie more accurately depict the average women, giving beauty a whole new definition.